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August 4th, 2015 | August 12th, 2019 | On American Fascism and the Rise of Trump
Prologue
It was late in the summer in 2015. I was spending most of my time at a Starbucks on Flatbush Avenue, writing a movie called “Fist of the Five Boroughs.” The movie is a kung-fu exploitation film with all minority leads and heroes. It’s the last violent thing I ever wrote.
While I was writing it, I’d been watching the reaction of our media to Donald Trump, and listening to Republicans who seemed to think he had no chance of being President. I was convinced otherwise, because I remembered the recent reactions our media, and far more people than I thought would react this way, to the murder of Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin, and Michael Brown. It had been less than a year since Michael Brown was gunned down in Ferguson, his body left in the sun, and the aftermath (while not surprising) still shocks me to this day. His murderer, Officer Darren Wilson, had gotten money from GoFundMe, and become a conservative celebrity, his star having faded since then.
In the end of July, I went to finish the last few pages of the movie I was working on, and saw an older man reading The Economist. I decided to strike up a conversation with him, hoping he was intelligent, and a typical New Yorker ready to engage me about why so many media liberals were failing to see…